case manager Archives ⋆ Page 2 of 49 ⋆ Cathy Cress

Cat Burglar’s Stealing Retirement Funds Under the Trump Administration

January 8, 2018

I wrote a blog Saturday about families being the number one con artists in the game of elder fiscal abuse. Now I am going to bring in the big time thieves the- white-collar cat burglars of elder fiscal abuse

The so-called fiduciary rule, which was scheduled to go into effect in April, would have required financial advisers working with retirement accounts to put the interests of their clients ahead of their own—

Brokers are currently allowed to follow a less-stringent “suitability” standard, which lets them recommend options that cost seniors more—and pay them more—even if a cheaper or more appropriate choice is available.

The Trump administration “blocked this rule and continues to block many retiring and aging client interests – putting them second and financial advisors interest (or ) profit first. This rule was supposed to go into effect January first, 2018 but was blocked again until 2019″

The rule’s dogged attack force has been led by Gary Cohn-president of Goldman Sachs before he became Mr. Trump’s top economic adviser. So, this is a pure Wall Street heist to hijack elders highly lucrative accounts.

In addition, the Wall St. Journal story reports that many of the comments made to the rule, are fake, bringing even more fears of government fraud and outside corrupt amputation to the democratic process that seems to slipping away

A care manager’s clients are most often affluent seniors in the top 10%, these clients will be affected by this delay in implementation, steering funding away from care into the coffers of Wall Street.

Did You Find Elder Fiscal Abuse Over the Holidays?

January 6, 2018

When you visited an elder family member over the holidays did you see something ” fishy” going on with their finances?? Was money missing from their accounts, expensive items purchased that the elder did not buy. Are they getting calls for donations from odd sources. All this can be elder fiscal abuse.This type of elder bank robbery represents a 36 billion heist and growing

Fiscal Elder abuse can be detected during the holiday season by visiting family / Paula Span, in her New Old Age column in the New York Times gave some very savvy tips that you should check out.

The worst perpetrators are not professional con artists. The most dangerous elder financial abusers aren’t folks running a scam like Bernie Madoff or crooks offering free lunches to retirees then swindling their money. Vicious financial abusers are most frequently the older person’s own family.

All we have to do is look at the infamous Brooke Astor case. Her son Anthony was convicted of siphoning millions and sentenced to one to three years in prison.
After the trial, one prosecutor called it “grand theft Astor,” with Mrs. Astor’s son on an “a six-year crime spree involving a series of larcenies”
A survey of State Adult Protective Abuse of Adults Over Sixty showed that the most common fiscal abuser was a son or daughter. Adult children perpetrated 33 % of the fiscal exploitation substantiated by APS. Other family members were the next biggest group of fiscal abusers investigated by APS. These other kin represented almost 22% of the financial abuser reported nationwide to adult protective services . So schooling midlife adult children visiting over the holidays to do some discreet detective work to check, desks bank account etc. What is important is they are not confrontive with the parent but to present questions as support for Mom and Dad
What are red flags for adult fiscal abuse
Financial abuse can have many faces
➢ Someone paying bills but bills are not paid
➢ Money missing from accounts
➢ Family member /caregiver withdrawing large amounts of money from accounts
➢ Someone taking money under false pretenses,
➢ forgery
➢ forced property transfers
➢ purchasing expensive items with the older person’s money without permission
➢ denying the older person access to his or her own funds or home.
➢ Scams perpetrated by salespeople
Elders rarely report elder abuse according to a Met life study on the crime. Only the tip of the iceberg of this con is reported for various reasons. Seniors often believe that they are responsible for allowing themselves to be swindled or abused. They frequently fear they will be placed in a nursing home if they report the crime. Older victims hold back in turning the perpetrator in because they are afraid the person will harm them further. And finally, since the tormentor is often a son or daughter their motherly urge is to protect the criminal in their nest.

If You saw fiscal abuse during the Holiday season visit to loved ones. report it to Adult Protective Services and call an aging life care manager . They are experts at helping you make sure this does not happen in the future with vulnerable elders.

Call Wonder Woman- A Geriatric Care Manager- After The Holidays

January 4, 2018

Make a New Years resolution to hire Wonder woman before your next visit to your long distance family member. Call an a geriatric care manager in their area. Do it before you your visit again. Make an appointment to go to their office and meet with them. Most GCM’s will see you to discuss their services at no charge. You can shop around and interview a few if you wish. Geriatric care managers can be located on the Aging Life Care Association web site Use your long distance family’s parent’s zip code.
It’s a preventative and prudent idea to have a geriatric care manager in the town where your older relative resides. If there is a crisis, it is cheaper to have them solve it. In an urgent situation, they can go to the hospital or emergency room,. This is saner and cost-effective than you getting on last-minute, expensive flights. You can still go but they can immediately be there to deal with the crisis. They are good insurance.

Before any crisis, you can have the GCM do an initial assessment and visit your older relative periodically (once a month, once every two months).This is preventative. That way they are there for you when you need them and have all the information to solve the problem. Think of them the way you do one of those blow-up beds. You can pump them up when you need them in a crisis—perhaps avoid that crisis, and you yourself can sleep more soundly and with more peace of mind in your own bed. Some of the things a geriatric care manager can do for you are:

1.Save you money by helping keep your parent out of the hospital and you off emergency long-distance flights.

2.Facilitate a family discussion of needs, resources, and division of labor among friends family

3. Recommend ways to proactively prepare and plan for a parent’s possible health care crisis.

4.Work on family cooperation to formulate the realistic parent-care plan.

5.Assess strengths and weaknesses of all of the potential caregivers

6. Help adult siblings resolve conflicts about care decisions.

7.Help siblings act together in the best interest of the parent

8.Decrease the tension between hometown and long distance siblings

9. Help the long-distance care provider deal with guilt and frustration that may result from their inability to provide more of the day-to-day care.

10.Locate aging resources ( both no -cost through the Older Americans Act) in your aging parents’ area quickly and without you having to do it

If you are a professional who wants to be Wonder Woman Check out this book.

Handbook of Geriatric Care Management 4th edition

How to Help Step Grandparents on the Holidays

December 23, 2017

During the coming holidays like Christmas and Hanukah step-grandparents are faced with their status as outliers.

Christmas Day may find the giving gifts as a step-grandparent. But blending families means multiple parents, two houses, and myriad grandparents.

Each kid can have a divorced Mom and Dad plus his or her newly remarried mother and father. Each set of children will spend Christmas twice- once with their divorced father and once with their divorced mother but in different houses. It is worthy of an excel spreadsheet.

Merging families means blending rituals. If one family celebrates Christmas on Christmas Eve and the other Christmas day -it’s a clash of cultures

Blood grandkids can spend Christmas morning with their blood dad or mom or stepmom or dad or some combination of all. New step-grandparents need to have to have the same schedule.

If step-grandchildren are teens, time with friends and boyfriends must be allowed. So getting all children- blood and step – gathering with their blended parents and two sets of grandparents on Christmas Day or evening is a challenge. The complications are myriad. The shores treacherous.

Holiday giving takes a genogram to map.

Step-grandparents have to be assuming the supportive role to shore up their adult children and grandchildren, both blood and step.

They need to be anchors to this rebuilt ship.

On the bright side, in the exponentially exploding numbers, you might have multiple piles of gifts, for the grandchildren. If you love to give this answers a deep need for the holiday and all year round

If you your clients are step grandparents-ask them to see themselves as a gift this holiday season. The Mantra is Stay steady, stay married, stay the same grandmother or grandfather, the same steady presence,

Be the counterpoint to incredible change.

They have to be the background, the supporting cast, the backstage crew that helps the play go on. For the new cast members, you are the green room, the welcoming place for the nervous and many times damaged – new stars.

Are You Skating Away From the Holiday on Ice Like Joni Mitchel?

December 18, 2017

It’s coming on Christmas
They’re cutting down trees
They’re putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
Oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on

As Joni Mitchel told us on her melancholy 1971 masterwork, “Blue” Celebrations with family on the holidays can often want you to take the ice and skate away from

Spending time with dysfunctional families often causes lots of seasonal lubrication – “A Holiday on Ice” as David Sedaris. What is the third sign that you are skating on the slippery slope as a geriatric care manager -Cut off

Distancing & cut off- are pulling away and having nothing to do with family or an individual in your family.

You find adult children who have not spoken to parents or siblings for years.

The celebrity feud and cut off between actress Angela Jolie and her Dad actor John Voigt is a well-publicized example

What prompted Jolie’s reconciliation – helping grandchildren- Jolie- reconciled with her Dad because her children’s need for a grandparent and the knowledge that your children just have a very different version of a relationship with your parents than you do.

When you assess the aging family as a professional you look at several signs of dysfunction. Contentiousness and anger are two other signs- the ripping pattern of divorce, remarriage, or other disruptions in relationships that shred the balance within the family system- both hacked by anger and contentiousness.

Gathering all these angry, contentious, cut off, divorced, ex-spouses, stepchildren, left behind blood children, deadbeat Dad’s and pour on alcohol and hold the mistletoe -you have the wrathful explosion that is that is dysfunctional family skating the holiday on ice.

Find out more about in Emily Salz and Lynn Hackstaff’s chapter Family Conflicts, Dependence and Mutuality: Care Management and the Dysfunctional Family. Handbook of Geriatric Care Management 4th edition.Jones and Bartlet.

When they call you be prepared, be ready, be a little fearful. Here are some tips.

How to Help Step Grandparents on the Holidays

Are You Skating Away From the Holiday on Ice Like Joni Mitchel?

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